A traffic stop and chaotic chase involving Texas state troopers and suspected human smugglers led to the discovery of nearly two dozen illegal immigrants, including several minors, in the back of a semitruck near the U.S. southern border.

In a video posted by Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) spokesman Lt. Chris Olivarez, a suspected human smuggler is seen jumping out of a Volvo semitruck and running as troopers chase him down. The incident occurred after a state trooper conducted a traffic stop Monday evening in Webb County, South Texas.

Olivarez said that the driver attempted to flee on foot but was «immediately arrested» by Texas officials. A search of the semitruck revealed 20 illegal immigrants concealed in the truck’s sleeping area.

The video shows troopers pulling back the truck cabin’s curtain to find the illegal immigrants crammed inside. The immigrants remained silent, only nodding as troopers questioned them. Four minors from Mexico and Guatemala were among the group, according to DPS.

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According to Olivarez, the driver was Miguel Angel Velazquez Chavez, a 25-year-old Mexican national. He was charged with evading arrest and smuggling persons and booked into the Webb County Jail.

Meanwhile, the 20 illegal immigrants, including the four minors, were referred to U.S. Border Patrol. The DPS Criminal Investigations Division is continuing to investigate the case.

This comes as Texas officials have continued to respond to human smuggling incidents despite dramatically reduced attempted border crossing numbers under President Donald Trump.

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State troopers and the Texas Department of public safety pulled over a tractor trailer smuggling 20 illegal aliens into the U.S. on May 18, 2026. (Texas Department of Public Safety)

In nearby Maverick County, Texas, troopers arrested Cuban national Yoisdelvis Nunez Acosta after a high-speed chase that ended with law enforcement performing a PIT maneuver. Acosta fled into nearby brush but was quickly apprehended. Another suspect, American national Alexander Rodriguez Acosta, was also arrested in connection with the smuggling operation. Both men were charged with six counts of smuggling persons, while six illegal immigrants from Mexico and Vietnam were referred to U.S. Border Patrol.

Both attempts occurred along a well-known human smuggling route at the southern border. In 2022, under the Biden administration, law enforcement discovered 53 dead immigrants abandoned inside a sweltering truck in nearby San Antonio. Authorities said the migrants suffered extreme heat exposure after being transported without adequate ventilation or water. The incident is considered one of the deadliest human smuggling incidents in U.S. history.

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White House border czar Tom Homan delivered the keynote address at the Border Security Expo on May 5, 2026, in Phoenix, Arizona. Homan said New York’s efforts to limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities could lead to increased enforcement activity. (Rebecca Noble/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Trump border czar Tom Homan has repeatedly emphasized that «illegal immigration is not a victimless crime.»

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In response to criticism of the Trump administration’s border policies, Homan said in April, «If they wore my shoes for 40 years, and talked to a 9-year-old girl that got raped multiple times, or stood in the back of a tractor trailer with 19 dead aliens at my feet, including a 5-year-old boy that baked to death, if they understood the atrocities that happened on the open border, I think their opinion would change.»

«Where President Trump had the most secure border in the lifetime of this nation, right now, lives are being saved,» he emphasized. «He’s saving thousands of lives a year because he has a secure border.» 

UNITED NATIONS — The Czech Republic is prepared to help protect freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz and is aligning closely with the Trump administration on security, NATO and Israel, Czech Foreign Minister Petr Macinka told Fox News Digital during an exclusive interview at the United Nations in New York.

Prague already had begun discussions about contributing specialized capabilities to help secure the strategically vital waterway amid growing tensions with Iran, Macinka said while speaking at Security Council-related meetings at the U.N. 

«We are ready to contribute to freedom of passage and the Hormuz trade,» Macinka said. 

«We were among the first countries that were ready to contribute … We have no navy, as we are in the middle of Europe,» he explained, «But we have some unique passive surveillance capabilities.»

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Macinka warned that Iran posed a global threat through what he described as four main «war tools»: nuclear proliferation, drones and ballistic missiles, international terrorism and threats to the Strait of Hormuz. 

«Their nuclear military program must be stopped,» he said. «It’s a global risk and global threat.»

The comments come as the Trump administration has increased pressure on European allies to take a larger role in protecting international shipping routes amid Iranian threats tied to the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical oil transit choke points. Roughly one-fifth of global oil consumption passes through the narrow waterway connecting the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea.

Speaking after a meeting with foreign ministers in Sweden Friday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio questioned the value of hosting U.S. military bases in allied countries that later restrict American military operations during wartime.

«One of the arguments I always made was that these bases in the region provided us with logistical options that we wouldn’t otherwise have,» Rubio told reporters. «And when some of those bases are denied to you during a conflict that we’re involved in, then you question whether that value is still there.»

President Donald Trump also has sharply criticized NATO allies over a reluctance to participate in military operations tied to the Iran conflict and securing the Strait of Hormuz. 

Trump said he was «strongly considering» pulling the United States out of NATO after allies failed to join the U.S. campaign against Iran, according to an April 1 interview with Britain’s Daily Telegraph, calling the alliance a «paper tiger.»

Vessels of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps are seen during a ceremony marking the National Persian Gulf Day at the Persian Gulf near Bushehr, Iran, April 29, 2024. The National Persian Gulf Day marks the anniversary of the expulsion of Portuguese military forces from the Strait of Hormuz in 1622. (Shadati/Xinhua via Getty Images)

The Czech Republic, a NATO member since 1999, reached NATO’s benchmark of spending 2% of GDP on defense and has supported calls for Europe to increase military readiness amid Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Macinka strongly defended the administration’s calls for Europe to increase defense spending and reduce dependence on Washington for long-term security guarantees. 

«We should do our homework and build our defense to become stronger,» he said, arguing that Europe had delayed necessary military investments for too long.

He also tied Europe’s defense spending challenges to the European Union’s Green Deal policies, the bloc’s sweeping climate agenda aimed at reducing carbon emissions, calling them ideological and financially destructive. 

«If we get rid of this green, crazy alarmism, then we have enough money to build our defense,» he said.

The Czech foreign minister also voiced unusually direct support for Trump and his administration, praising what he described as a global «common sense» shift following Trump’s election victory.

«We are friends of Israel, and we are friends of America,» Macinka said. «Especially me as a politician, I’m a friend of the ideology of the current American administration.»

Macinka also referenced a clash earlier in 2026 with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the Munich Security Conference, where he criticized Europe’s liberal political establishment and defended the populist wave reshaping parts of Europe and the United States.

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A tanker sits at the Port of Fujairah, as the U.S.-Israel conflict with Iran limits marine traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. (REUTERS / Amr Alfiky / File Photo)

Macinka linked Prague’s strong support for Ukraine to the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, when hundreds of thousands of Warsaw Pact troops occupied the country for more than two decades.

He said that historical experience continues to shape Czech public opinion and support for Kyiv.

«The Czech society feels a big solidarity with Ukraine,» Macinka said, describing the war as a «symmetric war» between a powerful Russian military and a Ukrainian army backed by the West.

Macinka highlighted Prague’s leading role in a Czech-backed ammunition initiative supplying Ukraine with artillery rounds collected through international donor efforts. 

Recalling a visit to Kyiv earlier in 2026, he said he received intelligence briefings on battlefield ammunition consumption from Ukrainian military officials.

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Naval units from Iran and Russia simulate the rescue of a hijacked vessel during joint drills at the Port of Bandar Abbas in Hormozgan, Iran, on Feb. 19, 2026. (Iranian Army/Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images)

The Czech initiative delivered more than half a million rounds of ammunition in 2026 alone, according to Macinka, helping stabilize the battlefield ahead of possible peace negotiations.

Macinka argued that maintaining a stable front is essential for meaningful negotiations, warning that shifting battle lines will only harden demands on both sides.

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Newly recruited soldiers of Ukraine’s 159th Separate Mechanized Brigade participate in integration and advanced training exercises in Kharkiv Oblast on May 14, 2026, after completing basic military training. (Yevhen Titov/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)

With Washington increasingly focused on the Middle East, Macinka also said Europe must begin taking a larger diplomatic role in future negotiations over Ukraine.

«America is quite busy with the Middle East,» he said. «Europe should wake up and ask for a place at the table.»

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said the Trump administration’s newly declassified UAP files are exposing years of strange aerial sightings that government agencies failed to seriously dig into — even if the records do not point to recovered alien remains or ships. 

«What’s being surfaced isn’t crashed ships or alien bodies, but real unexplained phenomena,» Isaacman told Fox News Digital in an interview Friday. 

The disclosures come after the Trump administration released two waves of declassified UAP files as part of a broader transparency effort directing agencies to search internal databases for decades-old reports involving unexplained aerial activity after years of public skepticism surrounding government secrecy and UFO investigations. Officials say additional file releases from agencies including the CIA could soon follow.

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Isaacman framed the disclosures less as proof of extraterrestrial life than as a public test of unexplained evidence, saying modern cameras, military sensors and newly released government records are giving Americans more material to examine than ever before.

«Everybody’s got a camera phone, a doorbell camera. Every military aircraft flying has a million sensors,» Isaacman said. «You’re gonna pick up things. Pick up things that flew at a different angle, you know, across the lens that maybe if you had a better angle on, you’d be like, oh, that’s a balloon, or that might be a missile in a combat region. But because we caught it at an angle, it’s an unexplained phenomenon.»

Isaacman said the biggest surprise was not evidence of extraterrestrials, but how little attention federal agencies had historically given to unexplained aerial records, calling the renewed disclosure effort under the Trump administration «citizen science.»

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The newly surfaced material includes infrared footage from 2023 that appears to show a U.S. F-16 shooting down a diamond-shaped object over Lake Huron. (US Department of War via Getty Images)

«Government agencies really didn’t take this quite as seriously in the past until President Trump put out the tweet, basically giving an order to government agencies and going out and saying, look, this time you better go through the files, you better start searching your databases and bring things up,» said Isaacman.

«I think the president has really got government agencies now taking this seriously, to go look at the files and bring the data to light, and he’s putting it all out for everyone to analyze,» he added. «This is citizen science right now. Take a look at our files, tell us what you think.»

The newly surfaced material includes infrared footage from 2023 that appears to show a U.S. F-16 shooting down a diamond-shaped object over Lake Huron, along with reports documenting unexplained aerial objects spotted near military operations in Iran, Syria, Iraq, Greece and other parts of the Middle East. The records also include astronaut and NASA-related accounts from the Apollo and Gemini eras describing strange lights and unidentified objects observed in space.

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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the Trump administration is directing agencies to revisit long-buried UAP records in the name of transparency, while Isaacman said additional «big file tranches» from intelligence agencies could soon become public.

«I think the president has really got government agencies now taking this seriously, to go look at the files and bring the data to light, and he’s putting it all out for everyone to analyze,» said Isaacman. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images, Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

«There’s nothing I’m aware of in terms of alien bodies or spaceships,» Isaacman said. «But observations from decades past — from some of our adversaries and potentially some of our allies — essentially saying, ‘We saw something, we documented it, and we kept it buried in a file somewhere,’ are now being made public.»

The documents also contain testimony from intelligence officers and military pilots who said they could not explain encounters they witnessed during operations and training exercises.

Isaacman said he personally believes life likely exists elsewhere in the universe and argued that searching for it remains central to NASA’s long-term mission.

«I think if we go and bring samples back from Mars, you’ve got better than a 90% chance of former microbial life,» he said.

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Isaacman also pointed to Saturn’s moon Titan and Jupiter’s moon Europa as locations scientists believe may contain conditions capable of supporting microbial life or biosignatures — chemical indicators associated with living organisms.

Officials say additional UFO and UAP files will continue to be released in future batches as part of the administration’s ongoing disclosure effort. (Guvendemir/Getty Images)

«Things that could indicate perhaps that there was microbial life there or some other form there of which it changes the whole equation from surely there is life out there somewhere to what if it’s everywhere,» said Isaacman.

Isaacman also argued that broader public disclosure could help reduce skepticism at a time when advances in artificial intelligence and digital manipulation are making it increasingly difficult for people to distinguish authentic footage from fabricated material.

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«I would say that some of the most interesting data that NASA has provided as part of the UAP disclosure was taken on the surface of the moon from Apollo 12 and 17,» he said. «You can’t be a moon landing denier and also believe that those photos captured unexplained phenomenon.»

Officials say additional UFO and UAP files will continue to be released in future batches as part of the administration’s ongoing disclosure effort.